Public Spending: Barnett Formula

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, your Lordships might normally expect me to speak in a debate on the Barnett formula, but when I realised that my noble friend Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill was giving his maiden speech tonight, I immediately put my name down. It is a great privilege to follow my noble friend; I very much enjoyed listening to him speak, and I look forward to his contributions on many areas which I also care about.

It was wonderful to hear about my noble friend’s passion for public transport, which I also share. I am sorry to say that I have never had the chance to drive a London bus, but maybe this is my chance to put in a bid to do so. Due to my board membership of Transport for London, where my noble friend was the commissioner, I have worked on a gate line at London Bridge Tube station and made platform announcements—they let me do it only for a few hours, but I learned a lot along the way.

I would like to go back a little further to when I first met my noble friend. We were both at an event in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Fairly quickly, we started talking about accessible transport. He asked me whether I had ever been on a bus. I replied that I had not as I did not think they were accessible. I knew that my noble friend was involved in transport, but I am not sure that at that point I realised he was the commissioner. Once I realised that he was in charge of transport in London, I was more than happy to be proved wrong about access and I have been a bus traveller ever since. His knowledge of bus routes and their numbers is second to none and is better than any website or app I have ever found.

I would also like to echo other noble Lords’ thoughts on the leadership he showed up to and beyond the 2012 Games. The fact the public transport system worked so well in 2012 was one of the things that significantly contributed to the success of the Games. I was also privileged to work with my noble friend at the London Legacy Development Corporation, which is incredible. It shows that Britain can win, design, build and do legacy really well on big projects—as long as it has the vision. He now has a role at Network Rail—I am sure that Network Rail hears from me slightly more than it would often want to. My noble friend’s support for disabled people travelling on public transport is very welcome.

When I first came to your Lordships’ Chamber, I was given some very welcome advice, which was to come into the Chamber and sit and listen. I remember an early debate that I came into; it is fair to say it was quite technical, about the Barnett formula. When I left the Chamber and went through Central Lobby, I met a member of the public who had come to listen. He stopped me and slightly harangued me about one particular Member who had such strong views on it. I am very happy to say that it was Lord Barnett himself, so he was quite within his rights to have strong views.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, gave a very eloquent speech. As someone who was born in Wales, works in Wales and lives in the north-east of England—actually, I live on the Stockton and Darlington line in a train station—I believe that maybe it is time that we think differently about what we do.

I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Hendy raised HS2. It would be remiss of me not to highlight my wish for greater accessibility on trains and other modes of public transport and perhaps some of the missed opportunities we might be seeing to make HS2 step free. I know that it is not necessarily part of this debate, but we need to think about what more we can do with HS2 in terms of opening it up. Modelling from WPI Economics shows that inclusive transport brings significant advantages. A fully accessible network could help some of the 51,000 individuals with work-limiting disabilities to find employment, even more so and more importantly with the Government’s proposal to change the work capability assessment process.

HS2 is not cheap but, through many conversations with my noble friend, he has convinced me that it is the right thing to do. Rethinking how it will work could have a positive, tangible effect on the Treasury’s finances. A step-free rail network could deliver £450 million into the coffers of the Exchequer and produce an economic output boost of around £1.3 billion—all a valuable contribution.

This might be the last time I take part in a debate on the Barnett formula. After listening to the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, maybe in future we could be talking about a Greenhalgh formula.